Naughty three year old

[Nannyjoy08]

My three year old grandson has become very naughty and disobedient.
He throws things at his mum and me.
He won’t get dressed and eat his meals,
He is just very defiant.
He wakes very early am and won’t go back to bed. Daughter has tried cutting out his naps but so far it hasn’t made any difference.
Can anyone advise ion the best approach on the way to handle him as telling him of or shouting doesn’t do any good.

Does your daughter actually want advice for disciplining her son?

Shouting at small children, not surprisingly, rarely helps. Lead by example.

Three year olds are defiant. They push boundaries. It's a parents/primary caregivers jobs to teach them how to behave appropriately and to model appropriate behaviour. You have a grown up child you must know this. If you shout, all you teach is then when someone displeases you, you yell at them.

No shouting or hitting.
Lead by example but teach them actions have consequences and bad behaviour isn’t rewarded.
Praise him when he is good, acknowledge nice behaviour. Don’t get excited with naughty behaviour. Explain that if he does X again that Y will happen. (If you punch your little brother again, I will take your favourite toy away for the rest of the evening.) Follow through. Don’t say you’ll do something unless you will follow through. Once you follow through, don’t engage with hysterics or naughty behaviour, and focus only on what he’s doing good. (So when the crying stops and he’s sitting quietly, tell him good job sitting down like a good boy)

I had one a bit like this and I found the best approach was to stay extremely calm and advise of consequences. It was largely attention-seeking I think so any sort of big lecture, trying to put him in time out etc didn't work because it meant he'd got my undivided attention. Consequences have varied - if he has a current favourite toy I've taken that away, sometimes I've had phases of cutting down tv time but I always make it clear what the consequence will be 'if you do that again/don't stop by the time I going to three then X with happen'. It was a nightmare but things improved a lot by 4.5....

Sounds to me like a threenager and a very typical phase (mine is there too!)

For us, consistent and firm boundaries with clear consequence is the only way we can manage it. To start with though you pick your battles - what does she want to fix first?

We expect them to speak to us politely and it's time out if they are asked to speak properly and don't.
Same for playing appropriately and eating dinner.
Once we have that in place we then bring other things into the same roles. Too much too soon and you spend the whole time fighting behaviour and lose the impact and begin to hate it because it's all you do.